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Skill Chance over 100 - skill fails?

Anikka
Anikka
Babelfish

Sep-17-2007 17:18

Okay, I know the subject line probably doesn't make sense. How could you expect anything less from me? :-D

Anyway...

Not sure how this works. My impression was that the chance is a percentage. So in my below example, I had a 116% chance of my question being answered.

My chances:
Adjusted Rule Bending Chance: 116

What I chose to do:
Attempt to get him to bend the rules.

What I was told:
Milton decided to be more cooperative and answer more questions..

At that, he clammed up quick.
He'd had enough of my questions, unless there was something I could do to convince him to be more cooperative.


My thought was that perhaps I had absent-mindedly double-clicked the link for bending the rules. But even if I had, I should still have had the answer to the question (checking someone's alibi). Yet when I checked the case page, the alibi was still questionable.

So, has this happened to anyone else? Any idea what the cause is? Is it the game, or is it me? (Yeah, I know - it's probably 'operator error')

Replies

woody2
woody2
Old Shoe

Sep-17-2007 18:15

I have had this happen when I double click. Sometimes they do give the answer to the question and sometimes not. I guess you could call it a game glitch

crunchpatty
crunchpatty
Old Shoe

Sep-18-2007 00:37

Ani - any chance this was a case from the agency file that someone else had worked on before you got to it? Or if it's one of your own, that someone else burned all of Milton's patience trying to advance things? That message comes up for me when someone else has maxed out that townie's questions BEFORE I come around and get all character-judgey on his or her hardworking ass. Drove me nuts for like a year, what with the whole mixed-messagey-ness of it :)

Fickle townies.

*chants*

Blame someone else! Blame someone else!

R Anstett
R Anstett

Sep-18-2007 08:23

Actually it is because the game engine has a percentage chance of failure built in. When ever it checks the chance you will succeed you have a chance of failure, even if you are over the 100%.

Two reasons:

1 - There is the chance that you would not be sucessful, no matter how good you are. The chance to 'auto fail' is extremely small, 5% or less in most set ups.

2 - There is the chance of 'super success' where your skill level is so high that instead of the typical 4 questions answered you get 5 or 6. This really is the opposite of the auto fail and has the same small percentage chance of happening.

Ben did discuss this before on the boards, and in PM.

woggle woggs
woggle woggs
Well-Connected

Sep-19-2007 09:26

Hmmm... I've not experienced option 2, but that may because of the cases I usually work on (AIs). I do know that suspects and townies in easier cases occasionally give you 1-2 "free" questions before you need to use your skills on them (which can you determine ahead of time with stress detection). Maybe that's what you mean by getting 5-6 instead of the typical 4? In all my time doing AIs, I've never had more than 4 without using surveillance.

As for Anikka's experience, I've had the same thing happen to me several times and needed to pinch myself/click back on my browser/give the harness bells a shake to be sure there wasn't some mistake. I did notice this ONLY happens when I'm working on a case that has passed hands between detectives in my agency and when the townie in question has already been queried (usually by someone who has them as a contact). Apart from these shared cases, I have NEVER had my skills fail me when JoC give me a 100+ rating. On rare occasions I get a clam with 98 but never with 100.

Stooby
Stooby
Well-Connected

Sep-19-2007 12:11

It happens if someone has a contact and checks some questions but not them all. If they then pass it back to you they look clammed, you quiz them and they want a pay off. Trick is to get people to ask all the questions when they use their contact and not just one or two.

Anikka
Anikka
Babelfish

Sep-23-2007 14:50

Well, after all your wonderful answers I paid some really careful attention. It's happened to me twice more, and under exactly the circumstances that Woggle Woggs stated. Stooby, the person with the contact had asked all the questions, as far as I can tell. Perhaps the problem is that the question I'm trying to get answered (alibi) was not yet a question when the person with the contact had the case. If that makes sense. And it probably doesn't.

Thank you all for your help!!


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